


A Story that Almost Certainly Won’t Go Like This

by NevillesGran



Series: Juno Steel and the Good Neighbors [4]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Aurinko Crime Family, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Kidnapping (Offscreen)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:02:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22170727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: A possibility for the future: Juno has been captured. The rest of the crew debate options for getting him back, including a revealed secret or two and some unusual tracking methods.(Or: it's time for RITA!!!)
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: Juno Steel and the Good Neighbors [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566202
Comments: 6
Kudos: 111





	A Story that Almost Certainly Won’t Go Like This

You…

No, that’s not gonna work. This language really can’t contain _you_ with a single second-person pronoun.

 _I_. That’s better. I’m older than the moon and younger than the sun. I’ve had more names than I can even count, and I can count a _lot_. More names than there are stars in the sky, and most of them just as temporary. Which isn’t very temporary at all! Names are funny like that. They cling, kinda like bubble wrap, or marmosets—the new kind, with the gluey feet. Like in _Andromeda, Chainmail Warrior_ , when she’s pulling all those sucker-bugs off even while she’s fighting Scorpio’s MegaMechaStingerBot! Or _Ooblek_ , that _really_ creepy movie from the 22nd century, when the goo just keeps sticking to people! Or—

Names? Oh yeah! I’ve had tons. Titania, Tiamat, Patricia, Sera Verano, Rita, Asphodel, dark-skinned lady, Donald, Queen of Hearts…

None of them were my _Name_ name, obviously! Not that you could comprehend.

But enough about me! Juno Steel’s been kidnapped again! 

Or, you know, he could be. Sometime. Even I can’t know the future. But I’m _really_ good at guessing it sometimes—halfway through the story, or even earlier! Most of the time, when I watch _The Bachelorex,_ I can guess who they’re going to pick after just one or five episodes! Like, in season 20, they had this guy with pink lipstick— _bright_ pink lipstick, the real neon stuff—and Frannie said he was never gonna make it but I saw that the shade of his lipstick matched the—

Oh yeah, kidnapping. Boy, it’s been centuries since I had a human this interesting!

“If they won’t accept a hostage trade, we’re back to the original problem,” Buddy Aurinko is saying. “If we can find him, in those damn tunnels, we can get out—but the longer someone’s down there, the higher the chance that they’re spotted, and we can’t win a guerilla-off against the Raxnacorians in their own mines.”

Her hands wave through a holographic diagram of the Raxnacoria 5 over the kitchen table, rolling the moon like one of those fun bouncy balls you get to throw at the gym. Raxnacoria 5 used to be owned by Terra Pharma, but now it’s run by rebels against their evil corporate rule—who you’d think we’d get along with, criminal-to-criminal, like! But first they didn’t want to share the stuff they’d stolen, then they _really_ got huffy when we tried to steal it from them, which ain’t even fair because stealing something that’s already stolen doesn’t even count! Then Juno Steel went and did his usual thing where he made sure everyone else got away first, without him—which he’s been getting better about not doing, but not today, I guess. And here we are. 

It’s only been about six hours since then, but that’s a lot of time for a lot of bad stuff to happen. The Raxnacorians are _really_ touchy, and Juno is really _really_ mouthy.

“I still can’t get ahold of his comm,” I say, as I try for about the fiftieth time. “Or his earring, or even that cute little anklet that I _also_ put a tracking chip on. I think they must’ve broken them.” I scowl at my own comm. “I can get into _their_ comms just fine, and all the mine computers and stuff and stuff. But they don’t even have cameras and microphones in most of the tunnels, just those pressure sensors.”

I can find him on my own, of course, but I _promised_ myself that if I was going to spend time in mortal tales—that is, lives—I have to stay in-character AND only provide aid upon request. Being hired for an ongoing job as a super genius criminal hacker mastermind covers a pretty broad category of “upon request”, but if I can’t do it as Rita, then I can’t do it!

“I’ll scout ahead,” says Peter Nureyev. “Just get me down to the surface—”

He’s not pacing, because that Mag trained him too well for him to pace. He’s gone still as an anxious bunny rabbit instead, as he tries to file away the memories of the last time he and Juno Steel were trapped underground, bloody and dying to save the world. The last time he left Juno Steel behind in such a place, and only just barely made it back and got him out alive. He’s not doing a very good job. If he was a bunny, his nose would be twitching and he’d be hopping down the sewers in a blink of an eye.

Jet Siquliak is keeping a cautious eye on him. When he was seven, he watched a faerie lady destroy an entire village because her pet human ran away to it. He knows this isn’t then and there and Peter Nureyev and Juno Steel aren’t _that_ , but he’s a little freaked out anyway. He really doesn’t need to worry. Peter Nureyev is so young, he can’t do much more than hold up his own glamour underground—and maybe not even that, if he got deep enough! It’d be pretty stupid of him to just throw himself all alone into those mines after Juno Steel!

But anyone with a brain can see that that’s _exactly_ the reason Peter Nureyev would do something really, really stupid. 

Like, Buddy Aurinko. She’s a real smart lady.

“Not an option, I’m afraid, darling. Your cover’s already been blown. Vespa?”

“I could get around.” Vespa Ilkay shrugs. “We’ve got to at least figure out what sector he’s in, though. I can’t search the whole moon, not fast _and_ safe.”

“I can—” Peter Nureyev trips over himself to say, then cuts off just as fast. 

“Peter,” Buddy Aurinko begins, kind and sympathetic but with an edge like a sword she could unsheathe. It’s kinda like Arthur, except he had an actual sword, which was magical and everything. But the point is they don’t _need_ it, you know?

Peter Nureyev hesitates. Old habits are hard to break. But Juno Steel is on the line. 

“If Buddy gives me Juno’s Name back, I should be able to find him. Anywhere.”

“‘Give you his name back’?” Buddy Aurinko asks, eyebrow raised. “Darling, what in the world does that mean?”

She’s _lying_. No, actually—she didn’t say a single thing that’s untrue. That’s what’s great about questions! One time, a czar asked me if his queen was cheating on him, and I said, _If you have to ask, is that not an answer?_ And he went running right off to catch her with the gardener—gardening! It was all worked up in his head! Like, Jet Siquliak told Buddy Aurinko what Peter Nureyev was as soon as he was on the spaceship, because he wasn’t going to let his friend be surprised by that, and she told Vespa Ilkay, because she wasn’t going to let her basically-her-wife-oh-my-gosh-they-should- _so_ -get-married be surprised either, or tricked or anything. She even told _me_ not to make any deals with him, which was really sweet! I’m not even going to marry her! But none of them have mentioned it to Peter Nureyev, or to Juno Steel (who they assume would tell Peter Nureyev) (they’re right!) And he _thinks_ they _might_ know—he knows that Jet Siquliak knows!—but he’s mostly just been extra careful not to give any sign of it.

Except now, he’s so worked up worrying about Juno Steel that he only hesitates for the teensiest _tiniest_ extra breath before he drops his _entire_ glamour. I yelp! He looks kinda skeletony without it—elves always do. Pale, lanky, eyes dark enough to almost not be there, except for the spark of immortality in them. Pointy ears like a fox, or a Pluto fly trap. 

He says, a little desperate, “I’m a faerie changeling, the sort abandoned in this world. I’m not very good at it but– well, I found Juno last time we were separated, when I had his Name. So _please_ give it back.”

“I knew it!” I screech, and slap my hands over my mouth. Keep it together, Rita! I pull my hands down a little, and say, “I mean, I did a _lot_ of research, and Mister Steel never said anything but he had a _look_ in his eyes after he lost his eye the first time, like exactly like the _look_ of a guy who had a whole fairy tale adventure and didn’t tell his secretary _at all_ , even though _Snow White and the Seven Martians_ is one of her favorite streams ever forever!”

The kitchen lights brighten for a moment before I get myself under control. I just! Love! True! Love! Look at him, baring all his secrets! Ooh, I bet they could wake each other from enchanted sleep with a kiss! 

Jet Siquliak has an iron knife up one sleeve, as he has since he left Faerie. Vespa Ilkay has two, as well as a couple vials of rowan oil mixed with nightshade, because Jet Siquliak gives them as gifts. 

“Alright, Ransom,” says Buddy Aurinko, “I’ll want a _lot_ more explanation later, but for now…” She extends her hand with something bright and shining that she can’t see in her palm. “Juno Steel. Can you find him, now?”

Peter Nureyev sighs a little with happiness to have Juno Steel’s Name back, which is just _so darn cute_ that I accidentally make the lights flicker again. Down in the hold, Ruby shifts his weight and snorts uncomfortably. He’s the only one on the ship I can’t hide from—white stags are the wisest creatures in Faerie, like, weird old hermit on a mountain–wise. They just know themselves too much to be fooled by anyone else.

Then Peter Nureyev’s face gets all scrunchy with worry again, and his shoulders all hunchy, and I dig my hand into the salmon puffs for another munchy, because this is so exciting! And terrifying!

“I don’t…” He spins slowly, holding the Juno Steel’s Name in one outstretched fist, like he expects it to go _ding!_ when it’s pointing the right direction. I can feel him reaching out like _anything_ , searching for any place it’s supposed to go. 

“I can’t. I can’t find him.” 

I don’t blame him. _I_ can barely find Juno Steel, and I’ve been looking after him for years, _and_ I’m just about the best there is. But he’s a mile underground on a planet fifty miles away, and he happens to be chained with iron. It’s a coincidence, but it sure doesn’t help!

Peter Nureyev looks _stricken_. It sits wrong on his true face; lines that sharp aren’t made for anything but laughter and disdain. I lean forward, enthralled like I haven’t been since the _Dancing With the Centaurian Stars_ season finale. 

He whirls around to Jet Siquliak. “Siquliak! Does that mean he’s– he’s—”

“I do not have the sense of a Name that you may,” Jet Siquliak says calmly, like he always says things. Only a little bit of tension in his shoulders shows that he’s just as worried as the rest of you. “But I believe that it would be obvious if the original bearer of a Name were to die. If Juno Steel’s Name feels...active, then he is likely still alive and well.”

He’s kinda beaten up, actually, and unconscious, and chained to a chair. And probably kinda bloody, but it’s hard to tell if it’s his or not—the iron _really_ gets in the way. But it’s Juno Steel, so that’s _basically_ “well.” 

Peter Nureyev relaxes from, like, “super very extra nearly going to burst into a billion pieces of concentrated dehydrated grief like that one guy in _Robots from the Zombie World_ ” to “about half a microsecond from stepping into Faerie, taking advantage of the mutable nature of space there to sprint all the way to the surface of mining moon Raxnacoria 5, and coming back and digging it up handful by mortal handful until he finds Juno Steel again.” 

He doesn’t even know how _rare_ that talent is, to move between worlds like he does! But his blood is of Faerie but the heart that beats it belongs to the mortal world, so he can follow the call to either one! And he’s gotten _really_ good at intuiting the flow of space-time between them. 

I can’t stand it a _second longer_. 

“When you say ‘find him’ or ‘sense’ or all that, is it like a signal?” I ask, trying not to bounce. “If there an electrical thing, or radiation, or any other kind of energy we could trace? Maybe you could see it normally, but you’re too far away so the signal’s weak, or there’s distortion in the way, or you’re just tired and cranky ‘cuz you haven’t eaten—do you need a snack?” 

I offer my salmon puffs, even though there’s only two left. An instant later I snatch them back to clap my hands together. “Ooh, or magic! Can you do _magic spells_?”

I need them to _ask_ ; that’s the rule I set myself so that’s the rule I have to follow. I’m practically vibrating with anticipation. Juno Steel would’ve asked already, but he thinks outside the box like that, and thinks half the stuff I do is magic anyway, because he still doesn’t understand computers at all.

“Magic does not work like that, in this realm,” says Jet Siquliak. He’s just as stoic as ever, hiding real worry about Juno Steel, and some nervousness to talk about things he usually doesn’t admit to knowing—but it’s also _such_ a relief to be able to talk about it openly. “Nor in any other, as far as I am aware. There is simply a world that follows one set of rules, and one that follows another. If someone is born on one world and goes to another, their native rules come with them, to a limited extent.”

Oh, he _is_ sharp. I totally see why my baby sister likes him so much! (She won’t admit it but she _definitely_ does. She’s always been like that, even back when the Earth was young—always _take take take_ , but won’t ever say what she _wants_. It makes gift-giving _really_ hard, lemme tell you.)

“Rules like, _cross your t’s before your l’s and never a word will be misspelled_?” I ask. “Or, _look both ways before crossing the street_? Or, _no eating the—"_

“Rules such as the natural laws of causality,” Jet Siquliak interrupts. “But that will not avail us here.”

But Buddy Aurinko is pursing her lips in thought! 

“When we did that job in Yagasgard,” she says slowly, “you said it didn’t matter if the key actually fit the lock, so long as it felt enough like it _should_ , after all the work we’d put in. That’s the sort of crazy logic that world follows—and its locals.”

Jet Siquliak nods, not sure where she’s going.

“Rita,” she says, turning to me. “Those pressure sensors do cover the _entire_ tunnel system, yes?”

“Oh, yeah.” I edit the image of the moon into a sphere of glowing specks, every sensor lit up throughout the cored rock. It’s like Saturnian cheese! “I can tell you what all the tunnels are shaped like, and how there’s too much CO2 here, and the struts just got replaced here, which makes sense because it also has a real window to the surface, _real_ small and high up, so I bet that’s a popular place to sit and chat and eat snacks and—“

“Wonderful,” she says over me. “I assume you can set up some sort of search of their data, for any given field?”

 _I_ see where she’s going.

“Just give me a second, Captain A!” I cry, already typing furiously. “What are we looking for?”

“Let’s say ‘Persons’,” Buddy Aurinko says, and points to Peter Nureyev. “Peter, you’ll need to be the one to input Juno’s name. Really…mean it, I suppose.”

Peter Nureyev is still quivering like an antsy little bunny, and clutching Juno Steel’s Name close. He glances around at all of us. 

“Will that actually work?”

“I do not know,” Jet Siquliak says doubtfully.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Buddy Aurinko says confidently. “But it can’t hurt to try.”

“Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science,” Vespa Ilkay murmurs. “Reverse might as well work.”

At Peter Nureyev’s elegantly raised eyebrows, she snaps, “I read classics. Besides, Juno sure as hell couldn’t tell the difference, and that probably counts for something.”

His lips quirk up involuntarily (so! cute!) before he goes back to just being worried. But he does mutter, “Can’t hurt,” under his breath, reassuring mostly just to himself, and when I hold out my ready comm, he steps forward and types Juno Steel’s Name into the search bar, and hits Enter.

He feels me for a moment, as he passes the Name not to me, but certainly into my power. The faintest echo of a supernova burning right next to his skin. I pluck _that_ out of his mind before he even has time to register it—that’s not cheating or breaking my promise; that’s just staying in-character. 

It’s also _not_ oathbreaking to let the search work, so a little red dot pops up on the holograph where Juno Steel is being held. I was _specifically asked_. Maybe it wouldn’t’ve worked if I was really truly mortal, but...I’m not, and that’s part of the story! I’m just the only one who knows it! And Ruby the stag, and Marwoldeb might’ve noticed—I’m a universe-wide champion hider, and I take a lot of care not to _claim_ claim anyone, but she did dig all the way around in Juno Steel’s head. Also, there’s a couple hours with Frannie once that I _actually for-real don’t remember_ , in which I could’ve said _anything_ , because wow, the stars were aligned juuust right, and the Prince of Mars sent us some really _incredible_ shots. Also also, that one faerie lord I chased away from Mick Mercury—but he didn’t know about me being RIta, so that doesn’t count at all! 

The point is, no desolation is going to fall upon the nearest fifty stars or so, because I _don’t_ break my promise. Just looped the loophole a little, which is, by definition, allowed!

Also, everyone smiles, even Vespa Ilkay, and relaxes a bunch. Buddy Aurinko lets out a breath she’d only just been starting to hold, and Vespa Ilkay takes her hand and squeezes it. Jet Siquliak claps me on the back a little too hard and Peter Nureyev graduates from shiver-scared bunny to something more like jumpy-stressed jackalope, or maybe fidget-fussy April hare, or this stream I saw of cats in the 50th century who’d eaten a _pound_ of raw Centaurian caffeine, _each_. The whole _Carte Blanche_ family is a lot like those cats, really, as they all start talking plans all at once, for how to steal back our detective. 

Which is good, because he’s saying something rude to someone right now, and getting slapped for it. I hope he doesn’t get into even more trouble, before we all get there to rescue him!

I have thought about that, you know—the being too late. And I figure, if Juno Steel ever gets in a situation where he’s really truly about to die, like really really really the laser is there and his brain is there and- I don’t even wanna think about! But if I had to, I’d probably break my promise and save him, because I don’t want him to die—but his story’d still be over. It just would be. If he’d been really truly gonna die, then it would be over, and nothing I did would _truly_ extend it—and I’d be worried all the time! Even more than I am now! Something beat him once; what if it happened again!

So I’d probably let him retire, like he really deserves. Somewhere sunny with tons of ice cream and really good comm signal for streams and soft pillows and cute cats everywhere, and random mysteries to solve and people to save because otherwise he’d get bored—but low stakes. And I’m increasingly thinking I’d leave Peter Nureyev with him—I might _have_ to, if I want either of them to be happy!

But, joining in the babble of this little family of con artists and criminals kicking into gear to go rescue Juno Steel, I know I won’t have to do that today!

**Author's Note:**

> Don't assume that's the Woods-Witch's True Name, there; Rita would never be so rude or sloppy as to reveal anything but another pseudonym.
> 
> Probably the last fic in the series for a while, until s3 wraps up and I know where it went narratively so I can rewrite it in the AU.


End file.
